In a video aired on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Muslims to intensify their fight against the United States and warned that Washington's allies Israel and the Gulf Arab states would be the terrorist group's next targets.

"You have given us every legitimacy and every opportunity to continue fighting you," al-Zawahri said, in a video aired by CNN. "You should worry about your presence in the Gulf and the second place you should worry about is Israel."

Osama bin Laden's Egyptian-born deputy appears dressed in white and is seated in front of a wall of bookshelves rather than the usual cave setting and he tells his American viewers, "Your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster."

CNN broadcast excerpts from the video on Monday just hours before ceremonies marking the fifth anniversary of the attacks were due to commence across the United States.

The video appeared to be new, as al-Zawarhi refers to Israel's bombardment of Lebanon this summer and calls on the Muslim world to "rush with everything at its disposal to the aid of its Muslim brothers in Lebanon and Gaza."

CNN said the video was available on Islamist websites although it is not yet available on sites usually used to carry messages from al-Qaida. It is not clear where CNN got the video.

On Sunday, al-Qaida's media wing al-Sahab also released a 92 minute video entitled "The Manhattan Raids," a collage of video footage which gives a documentary-style retrospective of the five years since the attacks, and also refers to events leading up to them, such as the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Sudan.

The footage, which includes English subtitles, shows Osama bin Laden meeting colleagues in a mountain camp, apparently planning the attacks on New York and Washington. It also contains previously unseen testimonies from two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Wail al-Shehri and Hamza al-Ghamdi.